If you want to sell things to people, you can use TV advertisements and billboards to market your products. You can use bright graphics and catchy jingles. You can make sure that people see an advertisement for your product wherever they turn. You can even use those horrible animated banner ads on the internet. Getting people to buy stuff is just a matter of getting sufficient exposure and creating a context in which your products have sufficient credibility for people to want to try them. But if you want to help people radically reinvent their lives, you have to get a bit more personal than that…The Letter to the Hebrews — Chapter 2

2:1 We need to pay more attention to the things we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2:2 If the message spoken by the angels was reliable, and every offence and act of disobedience gets what it deserves, 2:3 how can we escape if we disregard this salvation which is so important? Originally it was announced by the Lord. It was confirmed to us by those who heard, 2:4 and God also confirmed it by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his will. 2:5 He did not place the future world, about which we are speaking, under the control of angels. 2:6 Someone has said this somewhere: “What are humans, that you should think of them, or the children of humans, that you should care about them? 2:7 You made them a little lower than the angels. You crowned them with glory and honour. 2:8 You have put everything under their control.” In putting everything under their control, he left nothing outside their control. We do not yet see everything under their control, 2:9 but we see Jesus, who was briefly made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he tasted death for everyone.

2:10 All things belong to God, and all things exist through him, so it was appropriate for God, while bringing many children to glory, to make the originator of their salvation perfect through suffering. 2:11 Both the one who makes people holy and the people who are made holy belong to the same Father, which is why Jesus is not embarrassed to call them brothers and sisters, 2:12 saying, “I will tell your name to my brothers. I will sing your praise in the presence of the church.” 2:13 Again, “I will put my trust in him.” Again, “Here I am with the children God has given me.”

2:14 Because God’s children have flesh and blood, he also became flesh and blood, so that through death he could destroy the one who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 2:15 and rescue everyone who lived their whole lives as slaves to the fear of death. 2:16 His help is not for angels; it is for the descendants of Abraham. 2:17 He had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could be a merciful and faithful high priest of God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. 2:18 He is able to help people who are tempted because he suffered and was tempted.

[…] to them. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews describes the lengths to which God went, in the second chapter: Because God’s children have flesh and blood, he also became flesh and blood, so that through […]